Strategies for launching a new product, Hiring freelancers for mundane tasks, Finding the right fit for your agency, Framework for hiring, and Leveraging media platforms for agency growth

0:00So this next episode is covering a portion of our agency owners association 1.5 hour call that Neil and I did. So if you're an agency owner or if you're looking to just learn more about how to scale an agency, there are a lot of questions that we get from the community members in here. This is basically a sneak preview into how the group works and one of the major benefits of the group. So if you're interested, please listen. And without further ado, here is the episode. Adam, go for it. Fisher. This is me. All right. So I want help launching a product. It's kind of a zany product because I'm trying to have a good time here in the whole marketing world, right?

0:41So it's a physical product. It's called Business Biscuits. And I'm going to try to fast track what the heck it is so this doesn't go too long. But it's all about like in-person meetings, especially after COVID, really boring, stuffy, like talking about the weather, traffic, whatever, how boring your weekend was. And then you have a meeting. Like I worked at CVS, by the way, corporate CVS. I'm in Rhode Island and CVS is like the one big company. And just meetings can be excruciating and there's no excitement. And but they'll sometimes do icebreakers and the icebreakers are super lame. So this is supposed to be like the antidote to that.

1:23So it's like a business engagement snack for in-person meetings called Business Biscuits. And so it contains like 12 icebreakers to make meetings more fun, basically. And I've had these for a while and I haven't done anything with it because it's kind of just sitting here. And I'm like, is it a good idea? Is it a bad idea? But I'm doing a landing page now. I'm going to launch it. I don't know if I should do paid. I'm sort of like in the jar. I can't really see like, what should I do with this? Obviously, I'm going to post it on LinkedIn, give it to people for free. I'm thinking about working states that launches events all the time.

1:58And there's like EOS traction. like reach out to those guys that would bring these to meetings but like what neil and eric like what would you do to launch this and what's your general and how do you think it might fail here i'll tell you what i would do first adam i would probably just focus on my if my agency is doing good revenue and it's growing probably just focus on that yeah go go ahead neil it's a lead magnet eric no no but you have to explain how the business biscuits works is it a food yeah so it It has 12 fortune cookies inside and each fortune. so you should do this business. Okay.

2:33So I would just create clever viral videos about people being really bored in meetings in person, being like tired of these boring in-person meetings, you know, check out business biscuits. And that's a really bad energy or pitch to do it. But think of Harmon brother, squatty potty. uh think loomy or loom or whatever it's called the deodorant try to create a funny video like that and i would figure out how to just run a crap load of ads targeting business professionals on the social web and maybe segment each each type of meeting that's really boring maybe it's like strategic planning maybe there's even a way to get granular like hr meetings off sites Offsites are usually fun.

3:24You got to find the, if just people who do meetings, you got to actually, I would actually more so focus on the type of companies that do a lot of meetings. So like agencies have lots of meetings, right? A lot of them are virtual. Now think of the industries that require you to go to the office and they do tons of meetings. Those are the ones where you want to pitch the business biscuits to. So you'd actually target corporations. Adam, what's your goal with this business? yes so there's an intrinsic component because like obviously building an agency is a huge grind right this is a way for me to create like a physical product which i'm excited about and be creative so that's part of it which could be recipe for for failure but it's also linked with strategy kiln which is the agency parent name and so it could become a lead magnet and help drive I have awareness of the agency.

4:17So look, I have the best, right? This is best. I'm not, it's not, I bought it, but it's not even open right now. Literally, I have one of these like icebreaker things, right? Or you don't have an icebreaker thing, but I have a lot of these card things that I buy. I think I have like four more sitting over there. I think I have three in the living room. So I love these things, right? But my usage on these, I probably only use it like once or twice and then I stop. I'm not saying yours is going to be that way, but I will say like, just to give practical experience here, I'm not going to give you advice here.

4:44I'm just going to experience here. Um, I actually spoke to someone yesterday about buying their agency and he's like, yeah, you know what? I really want to do this venture studio next. And then I want to do this academy over here. And then I want to do this because like, I need to do different things. Right. Um, you know, I've made this mistake, you know, eight, nine different things at once. Neil's made this mistake. He's had a lot of things. Um, and I think I've learned to, to just control, focus my ADD on the business. And so my ADD is all over single grain. Right. And it's, but it's, it's very focused ADD.

5:17Okay. And the results are, they're undeniable at the end of the day. So Neil, I don't know if you want to speak to this, but I think experience shares help here. Yeah. I found I'd make the most money and do the best financially when I focus. If you really hate your agency and you want to do business biscuits, go for it, but pick one and go all in like agencies are great cash cows uh or they can be a front ride and if you can scale them up but if you hate it money isn't everything in this world go do something that you're passionate just figure out how to cut your expenses but also every business sucks yeah every business sucks and when people like agencies aren't scalable there's so much work well i've never met one business that's as easy as it seems and they all suck to some degree right right right but adam i do think business biscuits may have potential i'm the packaging is really like the design's really cute so um i think i think there there might be a need for i think you're just gonna have to test in the market um so best of luck to you on that yeah but think of it as a grass is greener on the other side scenario everyone always says the grass is greener the grass is greener where you water it whoa but sure but the way i look at it as there there's always pros and cons nonstop, different kinds of businesses.

6:40You just got to figure out which one you like. I got to take a minute to tell you about the Agency Owners Association. This is a peer group for agency owners. Think YPO or EO, but for agency owners. And I just wanted to read you a couple of testimonials. So this first one comes from Carrie and we asked her, what do you like most about the group? She said, having a group of people to discuss and bounce ideas. The leads are great too. Yes, we share leads in this group as well. This one from Alian, He says the ability to really post whatever I want and need and the group responds. Great experience members, getting a lot of insights from conversations with other members, getting a lot of value from sessions from Eric, getting advice from others as well.

7:15And so if you want to grow your agency faster and you want a peer group to do so, just go to marketing school dot IELTS slash agency. This is a group that both Neil and I created. And our hope here is to create a vibrant community of agency owners and do a lot more with it in the future. So again, marketing school dot IELTS slash agency and we'll see you inside. cool adam looks like there's a risk that if i if i half measure it to protect the core business the agency that it'll just fall flat do you wait let's go back do you actually like the agency work or no i do and i don't so i mean i don't want to give like the banal story of like oh i have a five-month-old and i got a three-year-old and i'm working like 50 60 hours a week and it's hard but like that's part of it and I and I see like in two kids are going to be going to daycare soon so it's like can I actually survive like working this much or like or can I actually hire somebody and keep things going it's like I I don't spend enough time figuring out how to how to scale yeah I'm my own worst enemy with that yeah but as your business grows and becomes larger you'll slowly start solving problems by hiring and you know don't worry too much about scaling worry about getting customers and then infill roles with freelancers contractors eventually full-time employees that can help you do the mundane stuff that's wasting your time that's what i want help with maybe i can tap into the community because i tried hiring like three freelancers to be like digital marketing assistants and they've been abysmal and it's not like as if I'm doing brain science, like rocket science here.

8:55I want their help for some very basic project management and paid media analysis and client facing interaction. And I have, that's got me in a bad place because I feel like I'm just going to keep banging my head against the wall. So maybe I'll post something in the community. Yeah. And I think the issue that you're having is you're looking for someone, you just mentioned it, paid media, client relations, and there was a third one strategy, I think. Like project management, yeah. Project management, you're usually not going to find someone who can do all of it. You can find some people who are good at client relationship and project management.

9:30So you maybe hire just someone fractionally just for that part and another person for more of the technical aspect. Then you'll start having better luck. It's hard to find all in one. Adam, I would also get the book, Who, WHO with a question mark. I think books, they have a lot of frameworks, right? That's why I like these books. The books aren't the end all be all. You're still going to have to experience things and eat poo poo as you experience things. But I think that's going to help you because Neil in his early career, same thing with me. We made a lot of hiring mistakes and sometimes it's just, oh, this guy feels really good.

10:04This gal feels really good. Right. But I find a lot of people, they're just like, oh, I need a job description. And then they just go cut and paste from Google. But when you have a framework on, hey, these are the three to five jobs to be done. And I'm going to grade these people based on that. That goes a long way, right? Because everything at the end of the day, anybody will tell you, I don't care what your mission is. I don't care what your product or service is. It's all about people. So we got to make sure that we get that right. This will apply for any business that you do. The Black Friday Cyber Monday weekend is where systems get stress tested.

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11:08This Black Friday, join the thousands of new entrepreneurs hearing for the first time with Shopify. Sign up for your free trial today at shopify.com slash marketing school. That's shopify.com slash marketing school. Go to shopify.com slash marketing school and make this black Friday one to remember. Uh, and I would also think of it this way in which if you have to hire three people and none of them work out for the same role, there's something wrong with how you're hiring. Yeah, I'm going cheap. I'm going up work. It's not, There's a lot of amazing people on Upwork that are cheap. It's how you're hiring.

11:47It's how I'm hiring. Yeah. And I honestly think the first part of it is you're looking for one person to do all the things that you're doing versus paying someone on Upwork just to do strategy or just to do, you know, project management and client relationships. Like, have them focus. It's remember if you're hiring people from Upwork that specialize in tasks, it's not like it costs you a lot more money or anything like that, because what's happening is you're paying them per hour. So you're just paying the people per hour for that specific task. yeah and adam occasionally you'll find a diamond in the rough and this is someone that you might want to hire full-time but i think the first key here again jobs to be done check out the book who you'll understand roll score cards and things like that um and you know upworks a little i mean you know you have better filters for upwork too right like who has a bunch of five stars who has like they're consistent um and then be have them on i find from upwork you have to have a very short leash too if they don't perform they start disappearing and stuff they're just gone after probably the second or third time so you should also connect with chris i had my first project man run up work and she has worked full time for me for 2.5 years now well yeah it's gotta be me then my my approach cool i'm trying to look for one person to do everything that is too hard adam that's your homework hit up hit up chris in the school group and uh get that going and definitely throw it in the school group too so we can get get act more actual messages in there but I'm going to move on to Alian again.

13:47enriching the visitors that are hitting your website and also tailoring custom messages for them using AI. And so there's a handful of things that we're doing from a marketing standpoint, and our mission is just to drive more innovation. So if you want to learn more, just go to singlegrain.com, grain like rice. So singlegrain.com to learn more and we'll see you inside. Okay. So that's a connecting question to the Adam one as well. So the thing is, I don't want to, yeah so backstory is that i happen to have this media platform which is generating about 100 ,000 visitors per month it's not big but uh it's growing and uh and it itself uh attracts a lot of customers my question is how can agencies uh how can i leverage that to grow my agency and as you said i don't sometimes it feels like i'm running two businesses two separate businesses but the thing is, what I want to do is that I want to focus on one.

14:45I don't want to do two businesses, but I'm trying to balance, I'm trying to see where the synergy can come and that can help agency grow. How can I abuse it and utilize those media platforms? How much does a media platform drive in revenue? what percentage of your customers come from it um it started to have like recently uh i didn't very small but like but 20 to 30 percent 20 to 30 i have to i'm just i'm just calculating on my so if it's 20 to 30 percent i look at that as it's part of the business you're looking at a separate and you're running two separate but it could just be a mental thing and more so structural so if it's owned by your existing corporation your ad agency you may end up looking at it more as one business it's like we have uber suggests not really a separate business drives a lot of leads for the agency but it's also a different kind of product because it's a software and what you need to do is grow it and if it keeps driving you more and more customers then pay someone part-time to maintain it for you and continually grow it so you can get more leads and customers from it okay but have that in mind that the goal should be to continually drive leads to your agency if you start being like oh we want to monetize it and do this and that yeah then it's going to feel like two separate businesses yeah so we're we're monetizing it as well and that's why I think it's there's two businesses in the mind and you have to focus on one yeah, Vice Media that was something that I was looking at as a case study because they had an agency, Virtua thing they gone bankrupt, I don't know why don't look at Vice, they failed look at their brains and what they did wrong but they didn't do well as a corporation yeah cool, well look I think that's it for today Ezra's going to send you guys a survey just to see what we can do better here please be brutally honest with us and we look forward to doing the next one thank you have a great weekend bye thanks guys